Blanca de los Ríos

Blanca de los Ríos Nostench (15 August 1859 – 13 April 1956) was a Spanish writer and painter.

Life and work Blanca de los Ríos Nostench was an outstanding writer and literary critic, although she remains an obscure figure despite her intense and fruitful efforts. Her work has been translated into almost all European languages. Her birth into a cultured family brought her a broad education, as Consuelo Flecha points out in her 2000 biography of the author: "Surrounded by a family environment of writers, politicians, artists, and doctors, her education benefited from the wealth of stimuli and possibilities that this cultural context provided her with: her father, , architect; her maternal grandfather, doctor; her uncles, writers like José Amador de los Ríos; and politicians, were a reference which she knew how to intelligently call on, even though she knew that, as a woman, not all roads were equally easy for her."

She married (1861–1923), a well-known architect and archaeologist from Madrid and professor at the Madrid School of Architecture who made restorations and reforms of monuments such as the cathedrals of Cuenca and Burgos, and published important studies on the history of architecture. The move to the capital granted the author direct contact with its literary and intellectual environment and extended her horizons and plans.

She was a friend of Emilia Pardo Bazán, who had a very good opinion of her as a writer.

She participated as a collaborator in the writing of the Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana.

The concern for women and relations between Spain and Latin America were always present in her thoughts, reflected by her participation in various associations and events such as the Americanist Assembly of Barcelona, the Cádiz and Madrid Centers of Hispano-American Culture, the Superior Board of Charity of Madrid, and the Union of Spanish Ladies, in which she advocated for progress in protective measures for women at work. She belonged to the Ateneo de Madrid and was part of the Asamblea Nacional Consultiva from 1927 to 1929 during the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera.

Blanca de los Ríos made numerous studies of Tirso de Molina, for which she is today generally blamed, at least in biographical regard, for a lack of documentary rigor. She represented Tirso as an illegitimate son of the Duke of Osuna, something that has been shown to be extremely unlikely. Her Obras completas is viewed much more favorably by critics. This work earned her recognition from the Royal Spanish Academy, which she was not part of despite having been presented as a candidate. During these studies, she discovered the baptismal certificate of Lope de Vega, which until then was believed lost in the 1790 fire of the . After making numerous attempts, she discovered it in a private house on . Some of the church's books had been deposited there and left unharmed, among which she found, forgotten, the baptismal book of the period 1516 to 1573.

She received not only the praise of critics but also numerous decorations, among them the Grand Cross of the Order of Alfonso XII (in a tribute presided over by Queen Victoria Eugenie in 1924), the Gold Medal for Merit in Labour (1931), the Grand Cross of Alfonso X the Wise (1949), Colombia's Grand Cross of Boyaca, as well as the recognition of the City of Seville, which named a street for her in 1916.